Michael Steinberg Fine Art is pleased to present the silver locusts, a solo exhibition of new works by daniella dooling.

"The unnatural, that too is natural."
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Silver Locusts, Daniella Dooling's second solo exhibition at Michael Steinberg Fine Art, may well be seen as a challenge to Goethe's oft- quoted aphorism. Although the inherent shapes of her new sculpture derive from common taxidermy forms, any sense of the natural is radically displaced by Dooling's insistent use of low-tech synthetic materials. By setting the works in an equally synthetic environment – reminiscent of nowhere one has ever been – the artist reinforces the sense of dislocation and anxiety generated by the individual objects. Dooling does not take us to one of the "possible worlds" postulated by contemporary philosophy, but rather to an impossible one – a world where ambiguity and doubt are foundational principles.

Commenting on her initial encounter with Dooling's new work,  poet Caroline Bergvall writes:

At first sight, it is as though I had just walked into a personal and artist imaginary that combines nineteenth century natural science museology with the waking nightmares of psychoanalysis, the rampant deregulations of today's genetic research …

While these new works shift Dooling's emphasis from the human to the distinctly inhuman, they share an on-going disposition towards a rigorous reworking of banal materials. The sculpture and the installation also pursue her on-going dialogue between beauty and horror. This aspect of the work lead to her inclusion in Dangerous Beauty, an exhibition curated by Manon Slome that traveled from The Chelsea Art Museum in New York to the Palazzo delle Arte in Naples, Italy, receiving enormous critical acclaim in both venues. An image drawn from her 1998 video, Ten Foot Restriction (Bellevue Hospital) was selected for the catalogue cover and posters for the show.

Daniella Dooling lives and works in New York City. She has had numerous solo exhibitions, most recently at the Clifford Art Gallery of Colgate University (2007.)

She is currently on the faculty of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Dooling received her BFA degree from The School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, and her MFA degree from Yale University, New Haven, CT.